Report from Colorado

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By October the autumn winds had started to howl around the cabin, and we made the awful discovery that we hadn't located all the cracks. We were never warm enough. Eric should have been crawling by that time, but I couldn't all him to try because the floor wasn't safe and there was no way to repair it short of major alterations.

Our mornings started at 5:00 a.m., when we awoke to a freezing house and took turns building the fire. Then I put breakfast together and we sat down at a table still covered with dishes from the night before. (The kitchen wasn't heated enough to keep the contents of the 50-gallon drum from freezing, so I seldom had enough water.) We left for town before the cabin was warm. The return trip began about 5:30, but sometimes we didn't get home before 9:00 p.m. There were weeks when we never saw the valley by daylight.

The life was hard . . . much too hard to endure even for the sake of living in a place we both loved. We realized our mistake when we found ourselves spending sixteen hours a day away from the valley in order to give ourselves a bedroom for eight hours. If we had found a way to earn money from our home without the extra expense of commuting, we could have enjoyed the life of woodcutting, water-hauling and assorted pioneerlike activities. As it was, we felt nothing but hardship and fatigue.

Then, one morning after a storm, we got up early to head for town. The snow was deep and we were worried because we hadn't been able to afford chains for the Toyota. We did have a set on the back wheels that Larry had jury-rigged from our sedan . . . but they didn't fit very well and we threw one before we'd gone a mile, Shortly thereafter, when the Toy got stuck, Larry hiked back to look for the chain. No luck! Should we try to go on, or head back to the cabin? The choice was made for us: We couldn't back up or turn around, but the winch would pull us forward.

So began four hours of nightmare. One of us would get out of the car, wade through two feet of snow and disengage the clutch on the winch. (This was a chore in itself . . . the only way I could do it was by balancing on the bumper and swinging my foot at the switch.) Then we'd climb through more snow ahead, undo the winch from the tree to which it had been fastened, pull the cable forward a hundred feet, hook it to another tree, return to the Toyota, operate the machine to pull us onward . . . and repeat the procedure. There was one point—when both of us were frozen and exhausted, and neither could summon the strength to leave the vehicle—when I wondered if we would really make it. Of the four miles to the highway, we winched at least two.

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